Jenny Willott MP

Freedom Bill the Cure for Labour's Illiberal Law-Making Addiction

Today, the Welsh Liberal Democrats proposed a Freedom Bill as a priority for the Queen's Speech next Wednesday. A Freedom Bill would:

• restore traditional British liberties that have been curtailed by this government, and

• prevent government from continuing to stack up legislation as a proxy for governing.

Commenting, Jenny Willott MP said:

"The Labour government is addicted to law-making. The piles of paper needed to write all their new laws on weighs over 36 stones - that's more than two John Prescotts.

"Labour have created over 3000 new criminal offences and added 114,366 pages of new rules and regulations that take up over 12.5m of shelf space.

"Labour's obsessive law-making has led to the steady erosion of our freedoms, bewilderment in business and crisis in our public services. This hyperactive, headline-driven law making must stop.

"As the Government limbers up for a further volley of over 12,000 pages of rules and regulations, we need a Freedom Bill now more ever. Over the next year, the Government is likely to add a 6th Immigration Act, an 8th Terrorism Act, and a 24th Criminal Justice Act to its existing armada of 59 Home Office Bills.

"Our Freedom Bill would get rid of the most wasteful, unworkable and illiberal laws and projects this Government has come up with.

"For example, we would scrap ID Cards which currently cost taxpayers £95,000 a day and will become a goldmine for identity theft, give people back their right to protest, free from unnecessary restrictions, and prevent people from being extradited to the US without solid evidence against them.

"A Freedom Bill is not about loony liberalism, it is about defending the basic fundamental rights that we all deserve in a self-respecting liberal democracy."